Ready and Resilient Campaign kicks off with Performance Triad

The overall well being of the military community is the main focus of the Army Performance Triad, a new Army initiative focused on preventive care, which is part of the Army’s Ready and Resilient Campaign or R2C.

The Performance Triad will launch later this month. The campaign’s aim is to refocus the mental and physical health of service members who have generally gone through multiple deployments. The program is also targeted at military civilians, who make up a large section of the WSMR workforce.

Installation Command Sgt. Maj. Jimmy Sellers has taken the lead to ensure the campaign is commonly practiced locally.

“We want our workforce to be resilient and ready to handle challenges experienced on a day to day basis,” Sellers said during a Town Hall held earlier in the year.

The Triad went through a trial period last year. The success of a trial period led to an Army-wide launch earlier this year. The new initiative focuses on three key lifestyle adjustments in the fields of sleep, physical activity, and nutrition.

“The Performance Triad is designed to improve the health of active duty service members, their families, and retirees,” said McAfee Health Clinic Deputy Commander for Nursing and Patient Services Maj. Michael Wissemann.

The triad was developed in an effort to address a rise in overall injuries during deployment through the use of preventative care. The triad was initially tested in September of last year within three battalions at three different installations. One of the three testers was the 4th Battalion at Fort Bliss, Texas. The trial period focused on addressing and correcting the Soldier’s sleeping patterns, physical training, and eating patterns.

During the trial period, the Army noticed a decrease in overuse injuries. The decrease was in part because the Army moved to a program that was both aerobic and strength training based. In order to mimic the same results locally, Wissemann, the Performance Triad officer for WSMR, aims to speak to platoon leaders and platoon sergeants within the 2nd Engineer Battalion to provide triad tips to their troops.

“The aim of the Performance Triad also helps supply commanders with a healthy and ready force,” he said.

The triad invites service members to practice healthy choices when it comes to daily activities which include; eating and drinking habits, sleeping behaviors, and exercise habits. Wissemann recommends making small changes to daily routines that can prove to provide positive results. For example, an individual can experience an increase in energy and possibly weight loss by just by increasing the amount of water you they consume and reducing the amount of sugar drinks. “As a society we’ve moved away from drinking water and use soda and energy drinks. They’re high in non natural sugars and ingredients our body was not designed to process,” Wissemann said.

According to findings of a study reported in the December 2003 issue of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, Michael Boschmann, MD, and colleagues from Berlin’s Franz-Volhard Clinical Research Center estimate that over the course of a year, a person who increases his water consumption by 1.5 liters a day would burn an extra 17,400 calories, for a weight loss of approximately five pounds. They note that up to 40 percent of the increase in calorie burning is caused by the body’s attempt to heat the ingested water.

Sellers said the installation has been working with resources provided by Garrison to build the local Resiliency program on a platform of trust, dignity, and respect.

“Early on we learned that people will allow you to take care of them and their Families, if you treat them with dignity and respect. However, long before they give you their problems–they must first trust you,” Sellers said.

One of the goals of the campaign is for WSMR leaders to address and enforce several “hot button” issues like SHARP, suicide prevention, domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse with their employees.

“The Army’s Ready and Resilient Campaign is an extremely important tool and has proven to be invaluable in building resiliency in our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, civilians and family members. In other words, it is exactly what the doctor ordered,” Sellers said. “It provides leaders a way to touch on the physical, emotional and psychological well being of those who they are charged with caring for.”Continue reading below…

Throughout the coming months Wissemann will provide healthy tips to help carry out the triad’s initiatives through articles in the Missile Ranger. The tips will be separated into the triad’s three main focus areas.